Author's Notes: this whole story has been from Carlos's POV, but I figured for the epilogue it was permissible to do an even split of each one's reaction.
Epilogue - "Neat!"
395 days, 17 hours, 34 minutes, and 21 seconds have passed since a perfect scientist said 'hello, it's nice to meet you' to an unusual and slightly enamored radio host. 395 days, 17 hours, 34 minutes, and 21 seconds can change so very much.
Cecil didn't notice the shadows absorbing the town on the drive home. He didn't notice he had forgotten to lock his front door behind him as he discarded his keys on the side table in a slapdash fashion. He didn't even notice that his flannel pajamas didn't match, because Cecil was far too busy spinning circles in his bedroom and clutching a pillow to his face to muffle his incoherent, high-pitched squeaking. After several minutes he came to a dead stop and dropped the pillow to the floor.
"He kissed me," Cecil whispered to himself. The words felt strangely alive as he spoke them. "He kissed me," he announced to his empty room before he buried his face in his hands to hide the vibrant violet blush in his cheeks. "Carlos kissed me," Cecil sighed as he hugged his arms to himself and spun in another dizzy little circle. It was late, but he was too excited to be tired. He was distantly aware that his eyes were most likely flickering through an entire rainbow by now and that beneath his horribly clashing pajamas the ink across his skin was wriggling so frantically that it tickled, but he couldn't help himself. The news was practically bursting out of him, begging for an audience. He wanted to shout it out the window so all the quiet little town could hear. Acting on that exact whim, he crossed to the window and opened it easily. On second thought, shouting it to the night would be useless since the void would probably absorb all the words before anyone at all could hear them anyway. Cecil settled for hissing at one of the bushes beneath the windowpane.
"Psst, Belinda." The bush was quiet for a moment until one of the leaves twitched.
"What is it, Cecil?" the secret police officer within the shrubbery sighed.
Cecil brightened as he flopped backwards over the windowpane, dangling his mess of ivory hair upside down in the warm evening breeze. "Carlos kissed me tonight."
"Did he now," Belinda replied in a monotone.
"Yep, he kissed me," Cecil confirmed. "Right there in my car, leaned right over and kissed me. It was so wonderful and gentle and it tasted a little bit like spearmint chapstick-"
"Yes we know, Cecil," Belinda muttered impatiently. "We were surveilling the entire date." Cecil shot a dirty look at the shrub.
"We both agree that the bit at Gino's was especially sweet," the bush on the opposite end of the window mollified. Cecil's smile reappeared.
"Is that you, Everett? Good to hear you're back to working nights again." Cecil folded his arms lazily behind his head as he gazed up at the spattering of intrepid stars that danced bravely across the void. "I was a little nervous at first, I mean, he seemed so distracted. But then he took off his glasses to clean them during dinner and his eyes - oh his eyes. They're like melted chocolate with a touch of honey mixed in. I just wanted to drown in them, Everett."
"His eyes are very brown," Everett agreed, visibly shifting uncomfortably within his covert burrow.
"Cecil, it's past curfew," Belinda interrupted harshly.
"What? I'm inside," Cecil intoned frowardly, though he did readjust himself to a sitting position on the windowsill so his entire body was technically within the confines of his house. "Don't be jealous just because you don't have a perfect scientist who kisses you goodnight," he added with a smug little smirk. The greenery sighed audibly. Cecil shifted restlessly for a few quiet minutes - first resting his chin on one knee, then leaning back against the windowframe, and settling for dangling both legs outside the window in the slight summer breeze. Finally the questions again became too much to hold inside. "Hey, Everett, did you see the part where we did science together? That was so...neat," Cecil sighed dreamily.
"It was very neat," Everett agreed awkwardly. "Look, it's getting late, Cecil, why don't you get some sleep? Maybe you can tell your radio show all about the date tomorrow night," the secret police officer politely suggested.
"That's a fantastic idea!" Cecil bubbled. "I'm surprised I didn't think of that!"
"Great. Now go to bed," Belinda droned in her same monotone.
"Goodnight, Cecil," Everett offered more kindly.
"Goodnight," Cecil murmured to the bushes as they went back to covert surveillance and he went back to sitting, knees tucked to his chin on the windowsill. His eyes had settled on a delighted amethyst, his tattoos swirled into contented little spirals as euphoria slowly drifted its way into a more placid form of bliss. He would go to bed, but first he allowed himself a few more minutes to watch the night sky sparkle with the flickering light of dying stars and the glistening moon hanging low overhead. For just one night he chose to believe it wasn't a projection sponsored by a malicious government agency. His perfect, beautiful Carlos had kissed him. Tonight, anything was possible.
Carlos closed the door to his lab quickly and leaned against it, eyes squinted shut tight in embarrassment. "'Self-reliant' - really?!" he muttered to himself.
"Date went well then?" Andrea asked. Carlos's eyes shot open to what should have been his empty laboratory, but was instead filled with the hum of electrical machinery and ten inquisitive scientists.
"I thought you all went home at 5," he stuttered, slipping out of his weekend-casual lab coat and back into his considerably less-spiffy everyday lab coat.
"New job, new hours," Bethenny shrugged as she held a thermometer in a beaker of florescent blue liquid. "Besides, a town filling with shadows and you think we'd stay home?"
"We've got things mostly covered here if you weren't quite done..." Andrea nodded suggestively towards the door. Carlos ignored her and walked through the aisle of tables, peering over his team's work.
"Unless you wanted to invite him back in here, in which case we can totally get out of your way," Jake chimed as he retrieved a slightly luminescent version of the blue liquid from a vortex mixer.
"Not that it's anyone's business, but I think a first date is a bit early for that," Carlos quipped as he stopped to retrieve one of Arnst's equations scribbled across several sheets of paper and pinned to the corkboard.
"Tell me you at least kissed him," Andrea added as he approached her microscope where she had managed to pin down a small shadowy patch between two glass slides.
"Okay," Carlos interjected. "You've all done a great job so far, I think I can figure the rest out from here." Several of the scientists shared knowing glances and covert little grins as they filed out of the laboratory. Once he was sure he was alone, Carlos allowed himself a little moment to properly analyze the results of the evening's events. Ever since he had gotten back to Night Vale, the hazy glow of a potential romance with Cecil had faded into the solid fact that they were about to test the dubious hypothesis on the existence of love all over again. This terrifying realization gave the scientist jittery butterflies and apparently rendered him more or less mute around Cecil, except to say ridiculous things. "'Oh, thinking's just what scientists do!'" he mimicked in a falsetto as he double-checked the notes on the glowing cyan antidote. "Yes, Carlos, because scientists are socially awkward idiots apparently capable of little else," he mumbled to himself. "'I've been thinking about you,' 'I've been thinking you should roll up your sleeves a little farther because tattoos are kinda sexy,' literally a hundred possible variations to that sentence and just - 'I've been thinking'?" He sighed and leaned back in the chair, swirling the beaker in one hand. The blue glowed vibrantly with the slight movement. All calculations seemed to point to it being the most effective antidote to the strange shadow plague. "At least you kissed him," Carlos whispered more to himself than to the phosphorescent liquid. He was proud of himself for that much; the rest of the date may have gone less smoothly than planned, but at least he had worked up the nerve to kiss the disappointment right out of Cecil's expression at the end. And then he ran away and hid.
With a groan he snatched up the liquid and headed for the door. The best course of action to assure the easiest spread would be to pour it into the town's water reservoir down at the treatment facility. Carlos tried to remind himself as he overthought every detail of the date for the nth time that first dates were always a little awkward. "Really though the best part was the tree, I mean, why not just make up fake scientific tests because that makes perfect sense for a first date!" he muttered as he fumbled with the key to lock up the lab behind him.
"He thought it was neat," said the recycling bin. Carlos nearly jumped backwards at the completely unanticipated reply. The recycling bin was known for gurgling, but never for speaking.
"Um, excuse me?" he very politely asked the recycling bin.
Another voice piped up from behind the base of the streetlamp. "The science on the tree. Our sources confirm he was heard describing the event as 'neat.'" The streetlamp was what clicked the fact into place in his mind that these must be the secret police that Cecil assured him were legally obligated to keep him company while they spied on all aspects of his personal life. He wondered vaguely if they were the same officers who had arrested him before, but it wasn't the most pressing question presently on his mind.
"'Neat'?" Carlos repeated. "That's the actual word he used?" There was a quiet mumble and a brief pause before the voice from the recycling bin spoke again.
"Sources confirm that the word was accompanied by a breathy sigh. Also that he was spinning circles in his bedroom and telling inanimate objects that you had kissed him." A smile immediately slipped its way across the scientist's face. Of course Cecil would tell inanimate objects. In place of a captive radio audience, he was probably known to say quite a lot of things to his household décor.
"Thank you," Carlos said, stepping backwards towards his car.
"There is a curfew in effect," one of the secret police reminded him.
"I know, I just need to get to the water reservoir. I have the antidote to save the city from the shadow problem." He held up the still-slightly-luminescent liquid.
"In that case, carry on," the lamppost replied cordially.
"Goodnight," Carlos stuttered, taking slightly quicker steps towards the car.
"Goodnight!" both officers replied in a disturbing unison.
He waited until he was a few blocks away to allow himself to think about what the secret police had told him. His car was stopped at the traffic light that glowed burnt umber - the signal for an indefinite pause. His fingers were drumming a rhythm on the steering wheel as his mind drifted to picturing Cecil in some ridiculous shade of pajamas wandering around his bedroom babbling on in his adorably antiquated vocabulary. "Neat," Carlos repeated quietly. He buried his face in his hands and muffled a laugh. The umber light still hadn't changed after several quiet minutes, so he peeked up beyond it at the sky that everyone in Night Vale was so insistent was void. All he could see were the glimmering stars and the moon that seemed exceptionally close that particular night. As he watched the night sky so brilliantly alive with light, Carlos allowed himself to postulate that something impossible might be about to happen. For just one night, he chose to believe that maybe love was real after all.
End Notes: thus ends the first chaptered work I ever actually completed start to finish! I'm not sure I've mentioned, but all my Night Vale stories all belong to the same very long collection in my head, so in the future there may be more little oneshots here or there along this same plotline. :) Thank you so much to everyone who's kept up with the story the whole way and especially to those who commented along the way! I'm so glad other people have enjoyed the story and all my strange headcanons. You guys are the best!